The Ha/hmg Healthspam Rush Ver 2.0
Nogami
Join Date: 2002-11-13 Member: 8512Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-11-13 Member: 8512Members, Constellation
It's frustrating, and it still seems to be around in 2.0...
It's one of the reasons that I quit playing 1.04 two months ago - the marines were using the same tactic game after game after game, and it seems to have migrated quite nicely to 2.0:
Sit in your base and build res until you can equip a few guys with HMGs. Ignore any other aspects of play regarding branching out, covering hives, etc. for 10 min or so, then have them rush around and just kill alien RTs, totally ignore the aliens themselves and just spam health ontop of them if they seem to be in trouble. After a while, the aliens will be down to only a few RTs and from then on, it's all mop-up as you take the RTs - game-over.
On well-coordinated team games, it's possible for the aliens to band together to stop this attack, but a well-coordinated team game on a public server is exceptionally rare. This may be a flaw in the testing metholodgy where experienced players who communicate well were doing the majority of the testing / balancing.
A few thoughts:
I would SO love to have the health/ammo only be able to be distributed once every two seconds or so. Would make things a lot more interesting and help stop the healthspam rush.
I tend to agree about the lerk - I'd much rather have a model where you tilt the view a certain amount to fly in that direction - would make it a lot easier to control.
Upgraded lerk itself is pretty good. Being able to throw an umbra/spores really is good. Spores should still work on HA's though.
Feel free to flame if you wish - these are just my perceptions of the game. I may not be right, but I doubt I'm alone.
N.
It's one of the reasons that I quit playing 1.04 two months ago - the marines were using the same tactic game after game after game, and it seems to have migrated quite nicely to 2.0:
Sit in your base and build res until you can equip a few guys with HMGs. Ignore any other aspects of play regarding branching out, covering hives, etc. for 10 min or so, then have them rush around and just kill alien RTs, totally ignore the aliens themselves and just spam health ontop of them if they seem to be in trouble. After a while, the aliens will be down to only a few RTs and from then on, it's all mop-up as you take the RTs - game-over.
On well-coordinated team games, it's possible for the aliens to band together to stop this attack, but a well-coordinated team game on a public server is exceptionally rare. This may be a flaw in the testing metholodgy where experienced players who communicate well were doing the majority of the testing / balancing.
A few thoughts:
I would SO love to have the health/ammo only be able to be distributed once every two seconds or so. Would make things a lot more interesting and help stop the healthspam rush.
I tend to agree about the lerk - I'd much rather have a model where you tilt the view a certain amount to fly in that direction - would make it a lot easier to control.
Upgraded lerk itself is pretty good. Being able to throw an umbra/spores really is good. Spores should still work on HA's though.
Feel free to flame if you wish - these are just my perceptions of the game. I may not be right, but I doubt I'm alone.
N.
Comments
Lerk spike is nice to counter medspam, as the marine will immediately pick it up. But keep in mind, resource domination is now the key to NS. That's your best bet to stop the medspam.
Lastly, they are walking tanks. And when they're a team, your best bet is to destroy them as a team. HMGs don't rip through structures anymore, so if you can catch a few unloading the entire clips on some ocs, jump em as they reload.
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This really isn't a flaw. Skill of players in NS also includes the ability to act as a team (as opposed to CS and who can awp better for example). The game was tested in a pub style environment with very good players, both at pub level and clan teamwork level.
You will find that the team with the most teamwork and understanding of the game will win the game now. It's a resource battle now, not a hive battle.
In this regard, as a team, the strategy has shifted. NS doesn't enforce teamwork as that's something you must learn, but it promotes it. The way that playtesting was conducted, you could easily tell when a loss was because of bad teamwork or unbalanced gameplay or abilities.
What I'm getting at is, player skill and knowledge vary. But if you balance it at the highest level of skill and knowledge, you're pretty well off on the pub scene as player skill will be the determining factor in who wins (as it should be - and not who knows how to jp/hmg).
Players can always get better and learn more. There are many newbies to this game, and it's got quite the learning curve. Just don't expect the game to look balanced the first few times you play it, as strategies have yet to emerge and some players need to evolve. (although, I'm seeing good stuff here).
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Decided to give it a try. Had a 10 on 10 game, took some explaining, but I asked my team to make 3 gorges and 7 skulks to protect them.
Gorges immediately ran for the nearest res nozzles while skulks ran interference. As soon as those gorges made the res towers, they switched to skulks as soon as possible, and the first group of skulks switched to gorge and repeated the process reversed to grab 3 more res nozzles.
That gave us about 5 or 6 solid resource nozzles within about 4 minutes. One more swap with the remaining 4 players with resources to "gorge up" and make a few strategically placed o-chambers to keep the marines from pushing out too far, and we had the game in the bag.
As you said, hives don't make that much of a difference after the 2nd one. The 3rd is certainly not vital.
But it will take a while for NS players to make the adjustment. Alien teams are so focused on hives right now, they take some extensive prodding to push them to just capping/protecting res nozzles until gorges can lock the res down.
N.
You are playing the new version wrong.
Try this:
You get 3 skulks to drop 1 upgrade chamber , and you get 4 more skulks to go gorge and drop an rt.
They go back to skulk straight away, and start killing.
Once a skulk gets enough res, he goes gorge, and builds the hive.
In a 10v10 game you should try at least half the team gorges, and thats <b>at least</b>
Get out the 1.04 mindset.... permanent gorges are a thing of the past, getting kills means more res, if you have more res than marines, you will win most of the time, if your team plays smart.
You are playing the new version wrong.
Try this:
You get 3 skulks to drop 1 upgrade chamber , and you get 4 more skulks to go gorge and drop an rt.
They go back to skulk straight away, and start killing.
Once a skulk gets enough res, he goes gorge, and builds the hive.
In a 10v10 game you should try at least half the team gorges, and thats <b>at least</b>
Get out the 1.04 mindset.... permanent gorges are a thing of the past, getting kills means more res, if you have more res than marines, you will win most of the time, if your team plays smart. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Naw, you're not understanding me.
- 3 gorges with 7 skulks protecting them. Gorges immediately drop RTs while skulks protect them.
- Swap to 3 NEW gorges while the 3 OLD gorges switch to skulk
- Drop 3 more RTs
- Swap to 4 more NEW gorges, 3 OLD gorges again switch to skulks
- New Gorges drop OTs to hamper marines
Original gorges then save res for hive.
Think of it as:
10 players:
Rotation 1 = players 1-3 are gorge, 4-10 are skulk
Rotation 2 = players 1-3 are skulk, 4-6 gorge, 7-10 skulk
Rotation 3 = players 1-6 skulk, 7-10 gorge
Since the initial spawn gives you around 25 res, there's enough players to put up a LOT of structures, really quickly.
N.
However, other way works too. Just depends on what's going on, the map, the 'rines, etc.
You need to be more concerned with shotguns - they've ALWAYS been great, but now commanders are actually starting to give them out freely.
Shotguns don't do piercing damage like HMGs do, so they're devastaing against aliens AND structures.
Now considered SOP for Kharaa in Euroland, or so I've been seeing.